Sichel, who identified himself as a "Lady Gaga fan," explained that while things like tickets sales currently count toward GDP, the value of things like Lady Gaga spending time working on a new song was not. "It's quite analogous to a factory investing in a new machine," Sichel told NPR and, according to him, it should be counted.

"The accounting rules for GDP were written in a simpler time, when most companies produced physical things," the story states, "But over time, the economy has increasingly shifted toward producing intangible goods."